Chapter 21
Cassie
Q uinn collapses on top of me, his heavy weight pinning me to the bed. It takes a moment for us both to catch our breath. After a few moments, he rolls off me to dispose of the condom in a tissue, tossing it into the trash can beside the bed, and then his back hits the mattress with a heavy thud, making me bounce a little.
I roll in toward him.
“That was incredible.” He rests his cheek on my shoulder, taking a quick bite. He laughs when I gasp. It didn’t really hurt, but I love the sound of his laughter, so I pretend to rub my shoulder with my fingertips.
He presses his lips to the red mark he just left on my skin, and then tucks a strand of loose hair back behind my ear, his fingers lingering on my skin. Such a small gesture. So tiny and inconsequential. But it totally works for me, like big time.
God, this man is like no other.
“I shouldn’t like you as much as I do,” he says quietly, tracing lazy patterns up and down my arm with his fingertips. “But I can’t help it. You’re too fucking perfect. You’re impossible to stay away from. Too hard to resist.” He smirks. “Tell me something gross about yourself. Something that’ll make me not like you as much.”
“Like what?”
He shrugs. “I dunno, anything.”
Ha. Okay, sure. This could be fun. I lean up on one elbow. We’re both still naked on the top of the covers, and for reasons I can’t explain, it somehow feels like the most natural thing in the world.
“Well, uh…let me think.” I run my fingers through his dark chest hair. When he closes his eyes briefly, I decide he must like it, so I do it again. “Oh, I know, sometimes I don’t take a shower right after I get back from a run because I like the way sweat feels on my skin.”
“That’s disgusting.” He blanches.
“It’s not that bad. I shower eventually, just not right away.”
He leans in, slowly licking my left breast. My nipple tightens in response. “No, you’re right; a sweaty Cassie does not a turn-off make. In fact, that’s not gross at all. Tell me something else, something way worse.”
“I don’t change my bedsheets often enough.”
“Neither do I.”
“I sometimes eat tuna straight from the can…”
He rolls his eyes. “That’s not— ”
“With my fingers,” I finish the sentence, biting my bottom lip in anticipation of his reaction. “That’s revolting, right?”
A slow smile splits Quinn’s face. “I once ate an oyster off the floor.”
This makes me giggle. Or maybe it’s because Quinn just traced his calloused fingertips down my side, and I’m super ticklish, and now I want him to tickle me everywhere just so I know how it feels.
“Why was it on the floor?” I ask.
His hand moves from my hip to cup my bare ass, and it takes everything inside me not to moan when his fingers start making feather-light circles all over my skin. “I don’t know. I must have dropped it or something. But I wasn’t gonna waste it. Oysters are fucking expensive.”
I have no idea how we got to this point, but I’m actually really enjoying myself. “My apartment is messy.”
He nods. “I pee in the shower.”
“I wear the same pair of socks more than once.”
“When I’m driving, and I don’t think anyone can see me, I have, on occasion, picked my nose.”
This stops me dead in my tracks. Yuk. I go to move off the bed to get away from him, but Quinn laughs most evilly and then grabs me. He flips over onto his back, hauling me on top of him, and my pulse gallops like a racehorse when he digs his fingers into my side, making me kick and squeal and basically fight him off while feeling his semi-hard cock rubbing against my thigh.
Really? Already?
“Nope, bad idea,” he says, rolling me back over so that we’re facing one another again, but now I’m on the other side of the bed, facing the window. “I can’t have your sexy tits in my face while I’m trying to talk to you, or we’ll never get any talking done.”
I can’t hide my disappointment. “You want to talk?”
“You never gave me a chance to explain myself.”
“There was nothing left to discuss.”
“Bullshit.” He shakes his head. “You wouldn’t listen to me. You wouldn’t even give me a chance to tell you my side of the story.”
I experience a pang of guilt. He does have a point. I look away, taking in the view of the twinkling city lights that stretch out for miles in every direction. Quinn’s absolutely right. We do need to talk, but I’m terrified I’m reading too much into this. I don’t want to ask him what it all means.
So many questions. So little time.
He kisses my shoulder, and a shiver runs through me. He takes a deep breath, exhaling slowly, and I know he’s waiting on me. He doesn’t pressure me, but waits silently beside me.
“Okay, let’s talk,” I eventually tell him. “I’m sorry I didn’t let you explain yourself. It was childish of me. But I guess my pride was a little bruised.”
“I never meant to hurt you.”
“Didn’t feel like it at the time.”
He threads his fingers through mine, squeezing gently. “I would never hurt you, Cassie. Not deliberately. It’s complicated, though; you know that as well as I do. “
“And yet you’re in my bed.”
He licks his bottom lip, his jaw working overtime while he considers his response. “I’m in your bed because that’s where I want to be. And you’re in my arms because I know that’s where you want to be. I’m sick to fucking death of trying to fight the inevitable.”
“Is that what you think we are, inevitable?”
I’m surprised by how calm he sounds, how composed his voice remains when he says, “I think we’ve both learned the hard way that life isn’t guaranteed. I like you, Cassie. I also like thinking about the possibility of us being a couple. But I know this is probably just sex for you. And maybe it’s just sex for me, too. I don’t really know what it is, but it’s something. Let’s explore the possibilities, and have sex again, maybe even on a regular basis?”
A rush of discomfort brings a blush to my cheeks. Is a fling all I want with Quinn? A no-brainer really, but it still doesn’t sit well with me for reasons I can’t yet fathom.
I chew on the inside of my cheek as I ponder that conundrum. The answer continues to stump me, and maybe I need to rationalize both sides of the equation. But then shock slams me hard against the mattress, and I roll over onto my back, blinking quickly while staring up at the intricate patterns on the ceiling when it hits me.
Oh my god.
There’s nothing to think about. I want to have sex with Quinn again. Many times. Many, many times. Frequently and often.
Quinn laughs roughly as if he can tell what I’m thinking. I can feel his beautiful dark eyes probing the side of my face, and his heavy arm slides over my middle. “Come on Alabama, it’s not rocket science. You’re either into me, or you’re not.”
“What are you asking for, exactly?”
“I don’t know, exactly ,” he mimics .
“Would we be exclusive?”
He doesn’t hesitate. “Hell, yes.”
“Are you sleeping with anyone else?”
This seems to catch him off guard. He stares at me for the longest time, as if he can’t believe I actually just asked him that question.
In hindsight, we probably should have had this conversation before we had sex, but you know, lust and other things were at the forefront of our minds.
“No, I’m not.” I don’t even try to hide my surprise, and he looks a little insulted. “If we do this, Cassie, we’re definitely exclusive. I haven’t slept with anyone since before the night we started talking at Leon’s. I haven’t been able to even think about anyone since then.”
Well, shit. “And you’re cool with that?”
“More than cool,” he says easily. “You cool with it, Alabama?” Smirking, Quinn drags one finger down between my breasts until it reaches my belly button. His short nail scrapes over my skin, circling the little dent a couple of times, getting lower and lower, and everything south of the border clenches tightly with anticipation.
“What about the band?” I ask softly.
His finger trails down over my mound, and his lips brush over my ear, eliciting a breathy moan from me. “This ain’t got nothing to do with them.”
His thumb brushes my clit, making my hips buck. Holy Moses. My toes curl. The pressure in my core is unbearable.
“What changed your mind?”
He smirks, humming contently as his lips press tiny kisses to the side of my neck. “Insanity, maybe? An unhealthy obsession with making you come on my tongue? Who knows? We should explore all the options, though.”
“What about Nick?”
His gaze locks tightly on my heaving breasts, his finger sliding lower through my sex. “He’ll fucking kill me if he finds out. So, I guess we don’t tell him.”
My head falls to one side.
Oh yes. More of that please.
“We’ll keep this between the two of us,” he breathes roughly. “We’ll sneak around behind their backs. Nick won’t have to know. It’ll be fun and fucking kinky as hell.”
I swallow. Hard .
Because the thought of sneaking around behind everyone’s back, that does sound kind of fun.
Quinn rolls onto his side, reaching across to the bedside table where he picks up a napkin and a pen. He pulls the cap off the pen with his teeth, and then spits it out on the floor. “Would it make you feel better if we made some ground rules? Made it official? Put it in writing?”
I feel my brows rising. “Is that really necessary?”
“Just humor me.” He uses one hand to hold the napkin still, and with the other hand he starts writing things down in a bullet list while talking out loud. “Number one, Nick remains clueless. Number two, it’s just sex. Number three, this will be exclusive for as long as we want it to be. Number four…” He taps the pen against his lips for a couple of seconds. “I…uh, I can’t think of a number four right now. We can fill in the blanks if we think of anything else later.”
I laugh, shaking my head. “Did you just initial that on my behalf?”
“Yep, faster that way. Okay, we all done? ”
“All done.”
Quinn folds the napkin in half, shoves it into the pocket of his jeans, and then crawls back across the bed again. He thrusts one big thigh between my legs, grinding his leg up against me, and I moan so loud it’s embarrassing.
Oh, yes, this is going to be so much fun.
The hair on his thigh is rough, but the chafing and the warmth and the friction, it feels incredible against my…
There’s a loud knock on the door.
Quinn and I both freeze.
His gaze locks tightly with mine, before both our heads snap in the direction of the door.
And just like that, I can feel his dick deflating in real time against my leg. Goddammit. There goes my chance at round two. And I was really, really looking forward to round two and maybe even a little more of that downstairs action he’s so damn good at.
Just my luck.
There’s another knock on the door, a little more urgent this time.
“Cassie, it’s me. Are you feeling any better?”
It’s Nick.
Shit.